I never thought I'd leave Christchurch, before the earthquakes. I always planned to go out and see the world, but I could never see myself living away from it. It's was a great city.

But things changed on Feburary 22. Almost waist-high liquefaction silt around our block left everyone stranded in their backyards with nowhere to go and no power to see what was happening, while helicopters circled overhead showing the world what has happening around me.

So much has gone on and changed, and young people like me have been left behind. While the rebuild is slowly going on, a person like me, a guy in his 20s, has had almost nothing to do in the city, and it goes in a vicious cycle.

I want to go out, and have a good time, be a normal idiotic 20-year-old and let loose, but there is nothing. Nothing but a bunch of older people telling me to go have pot luck dinners and join a sports club, complaining that all us young people expect everything to be handed to us.

So after almost two years after the quakes, I made the decision to leave the city. I'm studying a PreHealth course so I can get in to nursing and so far it's been great. Life is able to carry on like it used to with no broken roads, no dinner talk about the slackness of the insurance companies, a life like it used to be.

I want to return, I can't wait to return, but to be fair, there are no opportunities for me. There is nothing happening in the city for youth that has given me a reason to stay, and I think it's only slowly starting to be realised. There's talk of a few things in Christchurch for the youth, but I can't help but wonder, is it too little too late from CERA and the council?